CAIRO (Reuters) – Some organisers of the protests that toppled Egypt's Hosni Mubarak said on Saturday they were forming a council to defend the revolution and negotiate with a military council now running the country. They threatened to call for more demonstrations if the military failed to meet the "people's demands".
"The purpose of the Council of Trustees is to hold dialogue with the Higher Military Council and to carry the revolution forward through the transitional phase," Khaled Abdel Qader Ouda, an academic, told reporters in Cairo's Tahrir Square.
"The council will have the authority to call for protests or call them off depending on how the situation develops," he said.
Ouda said the Council of Trustees would call for a mass turnout next Friday to celebrate the success of the revolution.
The council would have about 20 members, including protest organisers, prominent individuals and leaders from across the political spectrum, he said. Contacts were still under way to check whether some prospective members were ready to join.
Safwat Hegazi, an active leader of the protests, said the revolution would go on until its goals had been met.
"If the army does not fulfill our demands, our uprising and its measures will return stronger. Next Friday is a vital march," he told Reuters. "We give the army the chance to fulfill the demands of the people."
He listed the most urgent demands as the immediate release of political prisoners, abolishing emergency law and scrapping the state security apparatus run by the interior ministry.
"The military council must present a reasonable time-frame to fulfill the demands," Higazi said.
(Reporting by Marwa Awad, Writing by Alistair Lyon)